


The Scope of Things

by decayinghorizon



Series: The Sharpest Lives [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 22:49:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6927139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decayinghorizon/pseuds/decayinghorizon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He left when he couldn't take it anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scope of Things

**Author's Note:**

> a song for this if you like that kinda thing: [Dogs Eating Dogs - Blink 182](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJwr0YtZ-I8)

He turned out to be a ghost.

He wasn’t dead, but he wanted to be. 

Every day was the same; stare through a scope and shoot some bad guys, get paid and go home. It was the same, that day, except the view from the rooftops became too much all at once, and he had to leave, fast. He had to tell everyone goodbye and shove his gun into Geoff’s arms and walk away and never come back and pretend that it all meant nothing. In a way, it did. This whole thing had numbed him, and he hadn’t even felt much before. He didn’t feel connected to anything, felt best in free fall, in the leaps between buildings. He had begun to think he’d feel best if he just never stopped falling, if he jumped without trying to catch himself, and he was a coward. He was afraid of dying even though he’d never admit it, was afraid of the pain and the splat and the end, so he dragged himself away from the ledges, ripped himself away from the association, from the temptation, from the opportunity.

His life became split into three parts: the before, the during, the after.

Something to understand was that he’d never had ambition. He’d dropped out of college, had never managed to work out a path for his life, a goal to achieve, something to get him through when it felt like he was nothing. He always felt like he was nothing, and his only real wish was to be invisible, to have people look right through him and not expect him to be anything but see-through, incorporeal. He would only ever disappoint anyone who chose to believe in him.  
He was a letdown even after he’d found something he was good at, even after people wanted him around, because he wasn’t good enough to let himself stay. 

The worst part was that he had the easiest job in the crew; everyone else had it worse than him, everyone else was stronger and no one deserved to leave less than him. Crouching on rooftops with his eye down a scope was the closest to invisible he could ever be, and the only danger he was in was from himself, but he still couldn’t take it, still too fucking weak to handle being alone at the top of a building. 

None of them would understand. He never lead on that he was miserable, never told anyone, and every single member of the crew loved what they did; he could see the way they lived for it. So he took on his role as the sarcastic asshole, always made jokes and witty one-liners, made them laugh because it was what he was good at, and because it was easier than being honest. No one ever dug deeper, because when every concerned “You okay?” was answered with a stupid meme, a typical deadpan Ray response, why would they? He left, and no one even knew why. He’d never be able to face them again, never be able to find the words to speak to them, to explain. 

In the beginning, it was great. It was all the video games he’d always loved in real life, it was headshots and digital blood and everything that felt satisfying, his rifle and his controller interchangeable. It was a game, and the reward greatly outweighed the risks. It was more money than he had ever seen, and he was well off for the first time in his life. He finally had some sort of a purpose, and he loved it. He used to live for it, too.

Only one day during a heist, he made the mistake of remembering that every person he put a bullet in was real. That, unlike him, they had lives and families and people who loved them; they weren’t created and programmed to die, and it was real blood pooling on the sidewalk. He felt sick, almost vomited over the roof’s edge. That was the first time he thought about leaving.

He didn’t, because he was selfish, and he wanted the money and the friends and the satisfaction. It wouldn’t matter if he left, anyway, they’d just find someone else to do the same thing. So he desensitized, did what he always did, made jokes and worked on autopilot, distancing himself, muscle memory pulling the trigger and scoring perfect kills without ever having to think about the consequences.  
He never came back from that, so far removed that looking back, he can’t understand why he considered other people’s lives a good reason to leave, wonders when that last good piece of him finally died, when it all became about saving his own sorry ass. 

He never minded being alone, before he joined the crew he always had been. But even though all his time during missions was spent by himself, he could always see everyone down below, he had a bird’s eye view of all the action and an earpiece connecting him to everyone, immersing him in their lives, in the chaos he wasn’t really part of. 

He’d never felt lonelier than when he came back to his apartment after walking away, never felt more devastatingly useless than when he lay in his bed, listening to the silence around him and the sirens in the distance, distinctly missing the sounds of five other voices in his ear, making jokes and setting fires and shooting guns. 

He deals, in a way. In a way where he stares longingly at tall buildings and fire escapes, where he opens his bedroom window and sits on the razor thin ledge, dangling his legs in empty air from the eighth floor because it felt more like home than the inside of his apartment ever did. In a way where leaving fixed nothing but lost him all his friends, the only family he ever managed to have and care about, and he has just enough pride to prevent him from crawling back to them, because they deserve better than a pathetic loser who will leave them in any moment of weakness. In a way where he stays high all the time in an attempt to forget, and it doesn’t ever really work. In a way where despite it all, his emotions seem more distant than ever, like he’s haunting himself, an echo of a person, a pain that never comes but is just close enough to the surface to almost ache. He’s empty in a way that he can’t explain, and he alternates between sleeping for days and for no time at all, an on and off insomniac. 

He deals in a way where he isn’t dealing at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I only have a few more pieces I've already written (some of the girls, and some B-team) but I'll most likely be writing more for this at some point, idk if anyone cares or not but yeah it's a thing.


End file.
